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Don Heck's Most Infamous Cover, Horrific #3 Up for Auction

Legendary artist Don Heck created many memorable covers over the years, but his cover for 1953's Horrific #3 might be his most infamous.

Best remembered for his co-creation of Iron Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and other Marvel characters, his long Silver Age run penciling Avengers, and his inks over Jack Kirby's work, Don Heck also penciled (or penciled and inked) nearly 300 covers over the course of his career.  These include a number of memorable and important covers.  The iconic covers that introduced Hawkeye (Tales of Suspense #57) and Giant-Man (Tales to Astonish #49) readily come to mind.  But Heck had started his comic art career at Comic Media over a decade before that era, and one of his earliest published covers is still arguably his most infamous.  There is a CGC VG/FN 5.0 Off-white to white pages copy of Horrific #3 (Comic Media, 1953) up for auction in the 2024 October 24 – 25 Pre-Code Horror & Crime Comics Showcase Auction #40272 at Heritage Auctions.

Heck's cover for Horrific #3 is actually reused from a detail on the cover of War Fury #1.  That issue and Weird Terror #1, also from Comic Media, are Heck's first known art credit in comic books. Heck had been working in the Harvey Comics production department when former Harvey Comics circulation manager Allen Hardy brought Heck and fellow Harvey production staffer Pete Morisi in for the launch of the Comic Media brand.

As noted in the book The Horror! the Horror! : Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You to Read, "Heck's cover for War Fury no. 1 (September 1952) portrays a bitter victory with a flamethrower; but for all its infernal violence, revenge has never seemed more futile. Certainly, it's too late; not only is the dead Gl's head prominently displayed, but it's also depicted upside down, insinuating chaos. The "bullet-in-the-head" entry wound is a kind of mocking third eye above the permanently open eyes of a man who not only saw death coming, but who also still seems to see it. As far as the reader can tell, the soldier will never be done seeing it, and the reader won't either. Heck's portrait opens a mirror into not exactly an inner life but an inner dying, one that never reaches death."

Interestingly, reusing that element for Horrific #3 also seems to have set the tone for Heck's horror covers at Comics Media, which often featured horrific and effective close-up portrait shots.  In a stellar and lengthy career, one of Heck's first covers is still one of his most memorable, and there's a CGC VG/FN 5.0 Off-white to white pages copy of Horrific #3 (Comic Media, 1953) up for auction in the 2024 October 24 – 25 Pre-Code Horror & Crime Comics Showcase Auction #40272 at Heritage Auctions.

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